Michael DexterFeb 20
Did UNIX/Unix tapes have live file systems to dump in or tree of resources to pull from? Or something else!
Show threadAdrian Chadd <verified.png>Feb 20

@dexter so yeah that's what 'tar' and 'pax' and 'cpio' were for. And for booting they'd typically boot the first stretch of files to an EOF/EOR marker on the tape, run that as the kernel; the kernel would then suck the next stretch until EOF/EOR into swap and boot that.

And yeah, I think sunos had mini-root that ran in RAM to format/partition a drive so you DID have swap. THen you'd boot it again from tape to do the install.

Show threadGarrett WollmanFeb 20
@erikarn @dexter Worth noting that very few disk devices were actually supported in early Unix and the partition layouts were compiled into the kernel, so there was no need for (or possibility of) labeling. I believe the original BSD disklabel was invented by Robert Elz to deal with the proliferation of disks, especially on workstations with SCSI.
Show threadMichael Dexter
@wollman @erikarn I’m busy dwelling on the notion of installers vs. live media and thank you for the help in the “before my time” department.
Feb 20 at 9:03pmWeb
Show threadGarrett WollmanFeb 20
@dexter @erikarn Oh, I also forgot about /stand. The purpose of the stuff in /stand was to have a set of executables you could load *instead of a kernel* (hence "standalone") to fix stuff. That would often include utilities for handling device-to-device copies, so on some systems, a boot tape would have a boot loader in the first file, the standalone copy utility in the second file, and then a filesystem image in the third file. That way you wouldn't have to input a copy utility from paper tape.
Show threadGarrett WollmanFeb 20
@dexter @erikarn For what it's worth, all my FreeBSD installs use a live filesystem, never the installer. On the filesystem image I have a filesystem image (it's literally the same filesystem, modulo a couple changes to the configuration so it boots without network) which is then `zfs recv`d to the newly initialized boot pool. Some day I will write a proper unattended installer, but I've been cloning this way for nearly 15 years.